Age: pre-1970
Background: Formerly a popular commercial variety, now rare
My supplier: Heritage Seed Library
Pros: beans are large and go through beautiful colour changes
Cons: string! string! string!

Black Magic is a macho runner bean. The pods are easily capable of growing over a foot long, the beans are massive and a hard glossy black when dried. But if you want to eat them as conventional runner beans you have to get in there quick and harvest them while the pods are very small. Otherwise you'll be chomping on a mouthful of green gristle. To say that the pods are stringy is an understatement.

Personally I don't think the pod flavour is anything special either. The flesh is juicy and succulent but coarse in texture and taste. I was not very impressed.

Photo: Plants are much like other runner beans, with orangey-red flowers. The curly pod shown here is not typical - most of the beans grow straight.

In the garden the plants were moderately attractive, having some red veining in the leaves and stems, and nice orangey-red flowers. But the usual runner bean glut never materialised. I probably didn't grow mine in the most advantageous position, but even so, the yields were very low. Mine also performed poorly in flower production, although pod set was good on the few flowers it did produce.

So on the whole I was disappointed with Black Magic. It has size and looks but the pod flavour doesn't match up to it. And although it certainly has merit as a shelling bean, the primary purpose of runner beans is eating the whole pods and it's no fun to find yourself chewing what feels like a mouthful of wire wool. It might appeal to exhibitors who are looking to grow enormously long pods but not necessarily to eat them.